Second illustration for Dickens's Hard Times
in the single volume Barnaby Rudge and Hard Times in the Ticknor & Fields (Boston, 1867)
Diamond Edition.

In his study of the three principal "horse-riders," Eytinge
has synthesised two different textual descriptions in chapter 6, "Sleary's
Horsemanship," in that he depicts the asthmatic Sleary, the circus-master, with
his two star performers, E. W. B. Childers and the diminutive Master
Kidderminster,
the circus company's Cupid in its equestrian performances, both
unfortunately (to
match the facing page) in civilian clothing at the Pegasus's Arms,
rather than in
their more picturesque professional attire.
[Commentary continues below.]

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Here is the first passage thus
realised:

"Before Mr. Bounderby could reply, a young man appeared
at the door,
and introducing himself with the words, "By your leaves, gentlemen!"
walked in with
his hands in his pockets. His face, close-shaven, thin, and sallow,
was shaded by
a great quantity of dark hair, brushed into a roll all round his head,
and parted up
the centre. His legs were very robust, but shorter than legs of
good proportions should have been. His chest and back were as much
too broad, as his legs were too short. He was dressed in a
Newmarket coat and tight-fitting trousers; wore a shawl round his
neck; smelt of lamp-oil, straw, orange-peel, horses' provender, and
sawdust; and looked a most remarkable sort of Centaur, compounded
of the stable and the play-house. Where the one began, and the
other ended, nobody could have told with any precision. This
gentleman was mentioned in the bills of the day as Mr. E. W. B.
Childers, so justly celebrated for his daring vaulting act as the
Wild Huntsman of the North American Prairies; in which popular
performance, a diminutive boy with an old face, who now accompanied
him, assisted as his infant son: being carried upside down over
his father's shoulder, by one foot, and held by the crown of his
head, heels upwards, in the palm of his father's hand, according to
the violent paternal manner in which wild huntsmen may be observed
to fondle their offspring. Made up with curls, wreaths, wings,
white bismuth, and carmine, this hopeful young person soared into
so pleasing a Cupid as to constitute the chief delight of the
maternal part of the spectators; but in private, where his
characteristics were a precocious cutaway coat and an extremely
gruff voice, he became of the Turf, turfy. [p. 389]

The astute reader of the 1867 volume naturally notes that the
company's "cackler," Mr. Sleary, has not as yet entered. Dickens describes
him subsequently:

Last of all appeared Mr. Sleary, — a stout man as already
mentioned, with one fixed eye, and one loose eye, a voice (if it can
be called so)
like the efforts of a broken old pair of bellows, a flabby surface,
and a muddled head
which was never sober and never drunk.

"Thquire!" said Mr. Sleary, who was troubled with
asthma, and whose
breath came far too thick and heavy for the letter s, "Your thervant!
Thith ith a
bad piethe of bithnith, thith ith. You've heard of my Clown and hith dog being
thuppothed to have morrithed?"

He addressed Mr. Gradgrind, who answered, "Yes."

"Well, Thquire," he returned, taking off his hat, and rubbing the
lining with his pocket-handkerchief, which he kept inside for the
purpose. "Ith it
your intenthion to do anything for the poor girl, Thquire?" [chapter
6, p. 392]